


thyself, too, shall die

by poalimal



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon, Discussions of death, Eerie, Fic in the Time of Quarantine, Gen, Immortality, M/M, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25686877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: Gabriel meets a ghost. A god? A messenger.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Kudos: 18





	thyself, too, shall die

**Author's Note:**

> Written while reading Silvia Moreno-Garcia's _Gods of Jade and Shadow._

The battle went west - deeper into the winding forest, heavy with wet from rain three nights past. Reaper picked his way slowly through the forest floor. Branches broke beneath his heavy tread - leaves mixed with mud and moss and blooming buds of ginger. Gnats and biters did not bother him - his blood and sweat sustained him barely, and others not at all. 

At a distance he heard the yell of his enemies - he saw the flashing red of friendly fire. 

The fight would go on without him.

In truth he was tired. The canopy covered the moon from him - he felt, always, that he was surrounded by night.

He stumbled first upon the vines, and lost his balance as he had not in years, flickering away to smoke in his surprise. He reoriented himself quickly, scrambling against what felt like rough rock through his gloves. He saw in the darkness that he did not touch rock, but rather crumbling cut stone. He narrowed his eyes - his vision became more perfect, more frightening - and he rose to his feet. He tossed the brick away.

Before him stood a tree. It had once been housed in some sort of building, perhaps, centuries and centuries past, and it was the bricks of this building that now littered the forest floor. The tree looked strange, he thought as he came closer, flickering through the stones. It looked uneven, and yet overgrown, as if someone had tried to cut it down and only half-succeeded, and suffered a total re-growth of the tree as a result.

More than that, the tree _felt_ strange - as if someone was hiding within it, and watching him.

Let it watch him, Reaper thought flatly. All his fear had died with him in the fire. Besides - he saw now - the tree was done for, anyway: thick mushrooms curved like a staircase up its flank. And mushrooms, a woman told him once, mean a tree will soon die.

Reaper paused. His mother. It was his mother, who had told him that.

He turned his back on the thought, and made as if to leap up into the trees.

'Don't go, little god,' said a voice.

Reaper turned again, his ears popping. Before the tree stood a woman - a man? - a being he could not comprehend, with tall sloping shoulders, and dark endless eyes. 

Reaper knew at once it was no human before him. How curious.

'I make no pretensions at godhood,' said Reaper. 'I'm a failed experiment, that's all, with human grudges and human tastes.'

The spirit came closer, laughter in its strange slanting face. 'You eat the souls of men, but your grudge is all that sustains you,' said the spirit. 'It will not be long before you have left all your humanity behind - so come, why not join me now? I grow weary, without someone to understand me, and I can see that you do, too.'

Reaper considered this. Somehow his thoughts were quite sluggish. 'I've got someone who understands me,' he said. 'He despises me - but he understands me. And I--' he began to yawn '--I understand him, too.' 

'But he will die soon, won't he?' said the spirit, gliding even closer. 'And you will live on after him.'

'If he dies, then I die,' Reaper said, blinking heavily. 'And if I. If I stay with you...' he sighed '...I cannot be with him.'

'If you could be with him,' said the spirit, now directly before him, 'you could not hear me. For I am the spirit of the lost and lonely.' Its hands were cool and grasping on his face. 'And you are very lonely.' Reaper's lids dragged down. Somehow he wanted to move his arms - but all was cold within him. He felt so very tired. So very--

alone.

* * *

_He slept rarely and dreamed even less. But he dreamed now of Gabriel; and he missed once more the man he had been._

_As Gabriel, he dreamed, as he had not in years, of his mother - his daughter - his wife. In his mind he was still married, his daughter still lived. His mind bloomed in darkness - he thought without bitterness of Ana, of Jesse, Genji, Pharah-- He did not like to think of the scientists, and so he did not._

_He thought of Jack._

_He thought of the way he had been when they first met. The way he had needed him; the way he had known him. The way he'd believed Jack when he said--_

'Gabe, if you don't wake up right now, I'll kill you myself!'

Well - it was a nice dream while it lasted. Reaper opened his eyes with a scowl, annoyed already. Jack's crotchety old face did little to improve his disposition.

'I'd like to see you try, old man,' Reaper growled. He expected Jack to pull his shitty old gun on him, as he always did. 

Instead Jack's face crumpled, and he pulled Reaper up into his arms. Reaper flickered to and fro in surprise. 'Hold still!' Jack barked. Out of sheer bewilderment, Reaper complied, trying to understand what had happened. 

His nanites came back online, slowly, and he regained the feeling in his limbs. Reaper realised that he was laid out on some forest floor. His mask was missing. What the fuck had happened? Had he fallen during a fight? He remembered that Overwatch had ambushed them... but that must have been hours ago. He heard no other voices now, saw no kind of gunfire. It seemed the two of them were all alone.

He turned his head and saw a great tree before them, torn open and smoking, as if something had been ripped out of it with flame quickly doused. There was something so strange, so familiar about the tree... but Reaper could not understand what. 

In spite of himself, he shuddered. Jack just held him tighter. 

'You are not allowed to leave me,' said Jack. His voice was very rough and very warm in his ear. 'Do you understand?'

Without his mask, he felt naked. 'I'm leaving you now,' said Reaper, phasing through him and standing upright. 'You don't get to order me around.'

Jack remained crouching in the mud, his arms and face empty as he turned and looked up at him. Reaper could see him without the moon - he wondered what it was that Jack saw, when he looked at him. 

'That's not what I meant,' said Jack.

'...I know what you meant,' Reaper said, uncomfortably. There was a very strange sensation growing in his chest - it seemed to increase in intensity the longer he looked at Jack, so instead he looked away.

He sent a reapicheep silently a little bit beyond them, where it rustled loudly into a pile of leaves. Jack turned to search for the source of the sound. Reaper took the opportunity to leap up into the trees.

Jack did not deign to follow him.

He returned to his sanctum in the early hours of the dawn. He had left his comm behind; he saw that he had several missed messages from Mauga, which he readily ignored. He took off his cloak and grabbed something falling from it before it hit the floor.

What was this? He peered into the palm of his hand. It looked like a crushed bit of mushroom. Where had it come from?

Without thinking, he put the mushroom in his mouth and he ate it. It tasted of soil, mostly.

He paused, wondering at himself. What had he done that for?

He shrugged the thought away. It was not as though the mushroom could kill him. He undressed himself and he washed and dried himself and he buried himself in his bed. And when he slept, he dreamed.

**Author's Note:**

> Deyr fé,
>     
>     
>       _Animals die,_
>     
> 
> deyja frændur,
>     
>     
>       _friends die,_
>     
> 
> deyr sjálfur ið sama;
>     
>     
>       _and thyself, too, shall die;_
>     
> 
> ek veit einn at aldri deyr,
>     
>     
>       _but one thing I know that never dies_
>     
> 
> dómr um dauðan hvern.
>     
>     
>       _the tales of the one who died._
>     


End file.
